Re: "mc is over!?"

[Steve Rainwater <srainwater ncc com>]

If you're looking for new developers, hostility towards people
volunteering to help is probably not a good approach. 

Looks like the project is hosted here (in case any other newbies are
reading):

https://www.midnight-commander.org/

Turns out I already have an account, probably from filing bug reports
over the years. There's some good info there. I checked out a copy of
the code today and got a clean compile. I'm going to be upgrading my box
from Fedora 21 to 22 next week, so it may be a few more days before I
get chance to do any coding.

Is the list of active developers on the above site up to date or is that
the list old developers who announced they were leaving? 

-Steve


On Fri, 2015-05-29 at 02:16 +0200, Egmont Koblinger wrote:
> You ask for source code repo and stuff? Do apologize to me,it's alot
> of shots andd beers speaking of me right now, but if you ask these
> questions and couldn't figure out the answers for yourself (I mean:
> the answer is straight there on the opening homepage of mc) then i'm
> afraid you might not be the kind of person the project's looking for.
> Sry
>
> Sent from mobile
>
> On May 28, 2015 11:57 PM, "Steve Rainwater" <srainwater ncc com>
> wrote:
>         Hi all,
>         
>         I'm another long time user of mc. I've used it on Windows,
>         Solaris,
>         HP-UX, and currently on GNU/Linux (mostly Fedora and CentOS).
>         I use it daily and find it an indispensable tool. Thanks to
>         everyone who's worked on it over the years! If mc development
>         is really coming to an end without new developers, I'm willing
>         to devote a little time to working on it. I'm a C programmer
>         and have submitted patches here and there to other projects
>         like Apache and LibXML2.
>         
>         I don't really care much about new mc features but I would
>         like to see work done on fixing bugs. There are mc bugs that
>         have annoyed me for many years, like the keybinding breakage
>         with with GNOME terminal that happened four or five years back
>         and still isn't fixed.
>         
>         Can someone point me to the developer resources like the
>         source code repo? I guess a good starting point is check out
>         the current code and get it compiling. Do new developers need
>         to create an account anywhere to get access?
>         
>         -Steve
>         
>         
>         On Thu, 2015-05-28 at 20:03 +0100, Michal Pirgl wrote:
>         > Hi
>         >
>         > I have been using mc for many years and I would like to
>         thank to
>         > everyone who spent their time on this project.
>         >
>         > I also cannot promise 20hrs in a week but I would like to
>         > participate/develop as much as I can to help in free time.
>         >
>         > Regards,
>         > Michal
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         > From: "Mike Smithson" <mdooligan gmail com>
>         > To: mc-devel gnome org
>         > Cc: mc gnome org
>         > Subject: Re: "mc is over!?"
>         > Date: Thu, 28 May 2015 07:26:22 -0700
>         >
>         > ________________________________
>         >
>         > Bah. Mc is not "over". Things change, that's all.
>         >
>         > I've been into mc since I don't know when. The first time I
>         > used it. Mid/late 90s I'm guessing. I saw how it floundered
>         > in the 4.6 series. I shrugged and kept tweaking and hacking
>         my
>         > version. A few years went by and I looked it up again,
>         purely
>         > out of curiosity.
>         >
>         > I was delighted that someone had given it a full work over
>         into
>         > the 4.8 series. There were some persistent, puzzling, and
>         very
>         > annoying bugs that are now gone.
>         >
>         > Excellent work, gentlemen. Thank you very much.
>         >
>         > My list of personal patches went from ~30 down to ~5, where
>         they
>         > sit now, mostly minor interface tweaks. Mc works, and it
>         works
>         > very well. If development stagnates for a while, so be it.
>         There
>         > is actually very little to do. Mc is as close to perfect as
>         > software gets. There will always be bugs and minor tweaks,
>         and
>         > that's what needs to be worked on, now and forever.
>         >
>         > Yes, mc in its current incarnation is a model from the
>         1990s. I
>         > like it that way. I'm not a big fan of C++. I also don't
>         like
>         > eye candy in a tool that is all about functionality and
>         utility,
>         > and I very much appreciate a file manager that can operate
>         when
>         > XWindows cannot, or the system is barely bootable.
>         >
>         > It's the perfect size: big enough to be feature-rich and
>         highly
>         > usable, yet small enough that a single individual can
>         > (theoretically) get his head around the entire code base.
>         It's
>         > also fun to hack.
>         >
>         > I cannot guarantee 20hrs/week, but I would be very
>         interested to
>         > work through bug reports and small enhancement requests at
>         my
>         > own pace, and see what I can get done.
>         >
>         > As a last thought for this email:
>         >
>         > I suppose what we have here is a complete lack of consensus
>         as to
>         > the direction to take if we were to move into a 5.0 series.
>         > My thinking is along the lines of complete modularity: a
>         basic
>         > interface design (that already exists) and everything else
>         is
>         > plugins. What if I want to use mc for inventory control?
>         Make a
>         > plugin to work with SQL instead of filesystem. Perhaps there
>         > needs to be room for people to experiment with this sort of
>         > thing. A 4.9beta branch that starts off as mess and
>         arguments but
>         > slowly gets sorted into something with vision.
>         >
>         > That's my 2 cents worth.
>         >
>         > Take care, and best wishes for those who are moving on to
>         bigger
>         > and better things. Thank you for your labors.